Page 71 of Knocked-up Bratva Bride
“Did I miss something while I was gone?”
I opened my mouth—but nothing came. Nothing except a broken inhale.
Then, like the final nail in a coffin, his voice cut through the silence. Very cold. Very flat. Very unapologetic.
“Yes,” Damien said, stepping out from behind her. “She is. The baby is mine.”
I couldn’t look at him.
All I saw was Katya. The way her body stiffened. The way her lips parted, then pressed shut, her jaw tight and trembling. The way her eyes filled with that volcano-erupting lava.
So many things flickered through them simultaneously: hurt, betrayal, disappointment.
Her gaze flicked from me to him and back again. “You—” she choked, her voice cracking. “Your baby ismyfather’s? Wait, what is this, a fucking nightmare? Am I awake? Is this real? My best friend fucked my dad while I was in a coma? No. Nope. I better still be in that fucking coma, because this joke is not fucking funny.”
Damien reached out. “Katya…”
But she hit his hands away.
“No, no, you don’t get a second pass to screw me over, dearfather. Only a fool gets played a second time, and I am not a fool.” She addressed Damien, but her eyes were burning into my skull.
“No,” I breathed. “It wasn’t like that. Katya, we weren’t…. It wasn’t during the coma….”
“Whoa! Wow! So, before? I was fully conscious when you two fucked behind my back? Tell me more. When did it happen?”
“Kat, please—it wasn’t—”
“When, dammit!”
“On your birthday.”
The tears flowed down my cheeks freely now when she staggered back half a step. Like the ground had shifted beneath her, and all she could do was retreat before she drowned in it. My hands reached for her, but she flinched.
The ache in my chest was unbearable. Like my ribs were trying to fold in on themselves, crushing my lungs, my heart, everything inside me that dared to love her.
I was breaking.
“You know, the two of you should forget that I came here. Forget that I ever woke up. I’m moving out of this haunted house.”
“Kat, please…we can get past this. You don’t have to do that. We want you here. Your father wants you—”
“And now you speak for him, too. Well, thanks for the offer,Mom, but I’m an adult and very much capable of making my own decisions.”
Roughly, she brushed past Damien, marching steadily back to the door she’d only passed a moment ago. Fedor tried to block her, but Damien signaled to let her go, and waved another that instructed him to watch her.
Before Kat got past the foyer, I heard the hurt in her voice bounce off the walls when she said, “Have a nice life, Elena.”
And the doors slammed shut.
The tears stung, blurring my vision of Damien and everything else that seemed comfortable weeks ago. He stretched his arms, but a hug from him only reminded me of what seemed to be the last hug I would ever get from Katya.
Regretfully, I shook my head, walking around him and up the stairs.
There had been a sliver of hope that we’d survive this, but Katya’s anger had proved that I was wishing on falling stars.
***
It was the kind of fight that only sixteen-year-olds could have. It was intense, ridiculous, and over in a blur of hormones and half-baked logic.
